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Jean Cousin’s story to date has followed a typical 21st-century DIY-artist narrative. For the past six years, the Lille, France native has flooded his Bandcamp and Soundcloud pages with several self-produced albums. The first, soundtrack for a film that doesn’t exist, spelled out his m.o. in no uncertain terms; the second, still images & other dreams, provides a handy subtitle. And while Cousin assumed the sort of alias—Johnny Ripper—you’d expect of some bass-bin-rattling EDM deviant, his early music gently tiptoed along the porous borders separating post-rock, IDM, and modern classical, often sounding like a piano recital remixed by Boards of Canada. After moving to Montreal in 2012 to study film (a medium that informs both his music and visually enhanced live performances), he’s now found a natural home at Constellation Records. But if Constellation has given him the means to execute his first proper album release, Cousin is using the moment in the spotlight to make himself even more anonymous.

For his latest release, Johnny Ripper has been reborn as Joni Void, a nom de punk better than anything the creators of “Vinyl” could’ve come up with. But in the context of Selfless, it symbolizes absence as much as attitude. Where he once composed on piano, and even occasionally sang, Cousin approached Selfless as a purely found-sound project, with melodies and rhythms emerging from intricate editing rather than performed parts. The limited vocals we hear—spoken-word poems, guest raps, or even just breathing—were captured through field recordings or phone messages, a tactic that reinforces Cousin’s shadowy presence. At times, the malleable, corroded nature of his music yields to the crisply captured sound of Cousin manipulating his machinery, like the unseen wizard pulling levers from behind the curtain. - Pitchfork